The CRTC has banned ads on CBC Radio 2 and ICI Musique. Could television be next?
Articles by Wade Rowland on communications technology, philosophy of science and religion, travel and other topics, including some scholarly articles.
The CRTC has banned ads on CBC Radio 2 and ICI Musique. Could television be next?
The Hip concert may have been the most subversive program the CBC has ever aired.
In the summer of 1970 Secretary-General U Thant delivered a speech to the United Nations General Assembly that was dismissed in business circles and much…
Who after all, will defend the ineptly managed disastrously underfunded CBC? Certainly not the private, for-profit radio and television industry, or even newspapers, all of whom see themselves as being in direct competition with the CBC, both on the air and online.
It seems to me that a partial solution to this puzzle can be found in the moral impulse, which is both a necessary and sufficient condition for proving the existence of moral absolutes, that is, values that are applicable in all cases, at all times, in all places. (Or, alternatively, values that are recognizable from all social, cultural and temporal perspectives.) The very fact of the existence of the moral impulse certainly denies the validity of moral relativism as a coherent philosophy.
There’s nothing wrong with the likes of Rogers and Google and Bell trying to make a buck on the debates. But it is important that these programs of national significance be made as widely accessible as possible. And that means that the CBC, with its television and radio networks and its online services—all built at public expense precisely to ensure universality—be included in the distribution process.
whether the new digital media are a natural extension of print, or of radio and television, is a moot point. Sites like thestar.com and cbc.ca are an amalgam of both traditions. So broadcasters might as easily complain about newspaper websites horning in on their territory as vice-versa.
Mr. Chambers, who led the team that came up with the CBC strategic plan just announced, appears to be a major part of that problem. The only viable strategy for the survival of our much–loved, much-criticized, and grievously afflicted CBC is for it to rediscover what it means to be a true public broadcaster, and to follow that path.